Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914 (review)

Terence Zuber's Inventing the Schlieffen Plan aggressively attacks a set of historical shibboleths: that Alfred von Schlieffen prepared a detailed invasion plan for war against France in 1905-6; that he favored the doctrine of the unfettered offensive; and that he wanted German troops to sweep west of Paris. Zuber will have none of this. There was never a Schlieffen Plan, the general actually favored a defensive-offensive approach, and the famous 1905 Denkschrift simply represented a plea for additional military manpower. His earlier articles in War in History prompted fierce retorts from those defending the more familiar Plan in a debate of almost theological intensity. Yet already Zuber's views have become influential, for example, in the first volume of Hugh Strachan's monumental history of the First World War.

Zuber argues that the "Plan" resulted from deliberate attempts in the early 1920s by Generals Wilhelm Groener and Hermann von Kuhl, among others, to silence critics like Hans Delbrück who blamed the generals for losing the war. By arguing that the hapless Helmuth von Moltke wrecked the perfect "Plan," responsibility for the loss could be shifted to one dead general instead of the vaunted General Staff. The official German history also conveniently omitted the 1914 operational plans, making impossible an independent assessment of the roles of Schlieffen and Moltke. Nor did the 1945 destruction of many of the army archives make things easier. Gerhard Ritter further reinforced the myth in 1956 when, anxious to blame the German generals for militarism, he published the then recently discovered 1905 Schlieffen memorandum that had escaped destruction. Now, thanks to the merger of the East and West German archives, and great diligence by Zuber and others, a more objective examination of the "Plan" is possible.

Zuber starts with a detailed evaluation of the elder Moltke's strategic writings, writings that revealed flashes of great brilliance amid a sea of trite. The general always worried about the risks of a two-front war and by 1887 thought Germany must attack first in the west, well ahead of Schlieffen's later conclusion. Moltke's successor, General Alfred von Waldersee, continued to worry about a major French assault against Lorraine, thereby anticipating Schlieffen's own fixation with the same problem.

A newly available German staff memorandum, written by Major Wilhelm Dieckmann in the 1930s, allows Zuber to examine Schlieffen's staff rides, war games, and memoranda between 1895 and 1905. Although the documents for the study were destroyed, this account has survived. The new source can be usefully supplemented with Robert T. Foley's recent edition and translation of Schlieffen's writings.

From these records Zuber concludes that the famous 1905 Denkschrift cannot be called a war plan; in fact, it remained in its original form in a family cupboard until 1913. While its general concepts were well known among the Prussian Staff, Zuber thinks the actual 1905 study only indirectly influenced Moltke. For the author, the 1905 memorandum represents a detailed concept paper that called, as had some earlier exercises, for an initial German attack in the west, moving through Belgium and Holland on the way to France in a sweep possibly going west of Paris. But the 1905 schema did not foresee war with Russia and made use of nonexistent troops, hence Zuber's claim that it was an argument for more troops, not a real war plan. Indeed, he notes that Schlieffen's final war game in November-December 1905 tested few of the assumptions behind the famous memorandum, thus more proof that it was a manpower paper, not an operational plan. At the same time he reminds readers that Schlieffen always fretted about a French attack in Lorraine, finally believing that superior use of Germany's internal rail network could offset the danger...